


and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

by withkissesfour



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 21:51:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withkissesfour/pseuds/withkissesfour
Summary: A collection of tumblr prompt fills for Bernie Wolfe and Serena Campbell, surgeon girlfriends in love.





	and we will put the lonesome on the shelf

**Author's Note:**

> matildaswan asked for: fic title - the stars in your eyes outshine even the moon.
> 
> This is the roadtrip fic nobody asked for. Thank you for beta-ing matildaswan, you certifiable babe. ❤️

 

Serena finds her on the floor of their office, stretched out against the old carpet, her eyes closed and mouth set in a grimace. The lights are off, but Serena can make out the worn soles of her white socks, the steady rise and fall of her stomach,  her palms – turned up towards the ceiling, in contemplation, prayer, giving herself up to the one in the morning madness.

‘You know we have beds for that,’ she teases, but closes the door anyway, moves towards her anyway, bending to sit by her side. She aches, itches, to sweep the fringe (blonder now, longer now) from in front of her eyes; brings her knees to her chest instead, watches her lick her lips.

‘Bad back,’ Bernie mumbles, syllables stretched out into a yawn, her mouth wide, her feet arched forward, _en pointe_. She turns her hand, then, pats at the carpet next to her, pats it again.

Serena taps Bernie’s hip with her foot, so that she shuffles over, and then shuffles down beside her. She knows, she supposes, how odd it would look if someone were to walk in now, barge into their office to be faced with the feet of their bosses, bodies close together – so their legs brush, so their hands brush. But she breathes in, lets the thought go, feels her muscles settle, her bones settle, and she doesn’t feel so wound tight, doesn’t feel so sore. She feels tired, she feels good.

She catches Bernie’s hand, so that their fingers knot together, make a cathedral, and she traces the scar on the knuckle of Bernie’s thumb, the one Bernie told her about one night, soft and low, a biking accident when she was seven.

‘We need a day off.’

‘Mmhm,’ Bernie hums lazily, lets her head fall towards Serena, lets her lips brush against her shoulder. She smells like sweat, like coffee and cigarettes, like standard issue shampoo, like ink, like sex: their bodies in a semi-permanent state of post-orgasmic bliss, aching - _aching_ \- and jangled.

‘Come away with me?’

Serena peers towards her then, sees Bernie peeking up through her eyelashes, earnest, feels her tangle and untangle and re-tangle their fingers, bumping their feet. She feels like she might burst, turns her head towards the ceiling again, collects herself into some semblance of togetherness, of _chill_.

‘Yeah, alright.’ It comes out casual, and she can feel Bernie’s lips curl against the material of her scrubs, can feel her own cheeks warm, own mouth split wide, teeth showing. ‘But no camping.’

‘Scout’s honour,’ Bernie promises with a lopsided grin.

‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence.’ She turns, pushes the pile of blonde hair from in front of Bernie’s face, so she can see her eyes, wide and sparkling, and smiles.

-

 

It’s no stroke of luck that they get the weekend off together. It’s hours of reshuffling, reworking, bargaining, of prostrating themselves before the protectors of administrative efficiency. It takes lie upon lie about why on _earth_ both heads of the same department would need the same weekend off, because nobody can know they’re dating, nobody knows they’re dating.

(Everyone knows they’re dating.)

 But they pull it off, in the end, and by Saturday morning they’re piling suitcases into the boot of Bernie’s car, while Serena whines about coffee and Bernie whines about _packing light, Serena?!_

‘It’s two days!’ she moans, even as she piles books into the backseat, even as she lays the dress Serena insisted on bringing flat across them – deep burgundy and billowing, fabric unwrinkled and cocooned in the dry-cleaning bag. She tries to act cross, tries not to think about Serena wearing it, about Serena taking it off, about taking it off Serena, leaving it in pile on their hotel room floor, and doesn’t feel very cross at all.

Bernie tests the boot door, slams it shut and clears her throat, turning around to face Serena. Her bed hair is stood up at ends, arms wrapped around her body, wrapped up in a cardigan; her face is clear – without makeup, without pretence – a sort of everyday loveliness.

She’s expecting an argument, a quip about owning more than one pair of shoes, one pair of dirty jeans. But the reactions are dull, the syllables slow to form around Serena’s un-caffeinated mouth, her tired tongue. She receives a raised eyebrow instead, a raised middle finger, a grumble.

‘Coffee.’  

They drive to a petrol station nearby, conversation stilted and punctuated with yawns – where Bernie checks the tires, where Serena inhales the worst coffee she’s maybe _ever_ had –nose wrinkled, mouth curling at the taste, at the smell. Bernie breathes out a laugh as she approaches, wiping her hands on her jeans.

 ‘Snob.’

‘Peasant,’ Serena replies, steels herself and swallows it in gulps, her eyes holding Bernie’s teasing gaze. She hurls the empty cup into the bin from a distance, triumphant, because bad caffeine is still caffeine, because her body jolts and sparks, alive, awake. She leans forward, kisses her, feels Bernie start, stumble, recover; Bernie’s tongue run along her top lip, coffee stained, pulling away.

‘Don’t see what you’re complaining about’, Bernie says, tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth, and she throws her head back in a great honking laugh. Serena gapes, flails, gathers herself to reach forward and tap her bum as she moves to the car.

-

 

It’s nice. It’s really nice. It’s everything she wanted it to be.

Bernie manoeuvres them onto the quieter roads, away from the long stretches of car upon car with the same idea as them, and they sail past houses, highways, bursting out of the city and into the country - past farms, past pastures, past acres and acres of field where the sky comes down to meet the earth, dotted with sheep and cows and people, tractors and barns.

Serena stares out the window and laughs at Bernie’s advice, offered long ago, wonders if it was ever taken up, if Bernie would offer it again. Serena turns her head, spies Bernie out of the corner of her eye, thinks that maybe one day they’ll settle in the countryside, maybe settle by the seaside, settle together and away from it all.

The route they’re taking begins to wind a little, past hedges, starts climbing steady hills, descending quickly and onto unfinished road. _It’s a surprise_ , Bernie had whispered, the other night as she plunged her phone into her back pocket, the map winding steadily along the screen, so that Serena wouldn’t see it, so she hadn’t asked.

She hates surprises, usually. She hates not knowing what somebody else knows, not being in on a secret, clued into the plan. But she finds she doesn’t mind so much, this time; doesn’t mind with Bernie.

There is the steady crunch of gravel, beneath the car tires, the steady trickle of news on the radio; switching to the lengthy playlist Charlotte put together for them when the static begins to blare.

The sunshine flickers behind some clouds, dulling the glare of the road and Bernie starts apprising her of the foibles and charms of the new F1s. Serena turns to watch her: hair pulled back in a tight ponytail with her eyes on the gently winding road and her fingers brushing Serena’s thigh and her mouth a steady, happy flow of words.

Serena thinks she’d probably go anywhere with Bernie. She thinks this is everything she want it to be. It’s –

‘ _Fuck!’_

There is a large crash, an almighty _bang_ ; something flies towards the car, hits the front bonnet.

Serena grips the handle above her, Bernie grips the wheel, yanks it so the car lurches, swerves. For a moment she thinks they might spin, gravity pressing them hard against their seat. Or they might be propelled forward, tethers failing, towards the front windshield of car; tires screeching until they end up in a ditch, bonnet deep in mud, their limbs at all ends and over each other, tangled like dolls, half-broken, long forgotten, left to gather dust together.

She wants to tell Bernie she loves her now, gripped by the urge to gather her in her arms, to press her mouth against the lines between Bernie’s eyebrows, pinching around her mouth, kiss away the fear, unabated, widening her eyes.

 They screech to a halt instead, coming to a stop just short of a trench by the side of the road, Bernie’s grip stays tight on the wheel, holding it steady as they slow to a stop.The car steams, splutters, begins to smell – smoke rising from the bonnet which has crumpled from the impact of the object that hit it.

She looks over to see Bernie’s fringe flap onto her forehead, her hair fall from the ponytail, framing her face and bouncing as she thumps back into her seat. She’s desperate to reach forward, whisk it from her face. She watches her jaw set, her shoulders set, then looks behind them.

There’s a long black piece of construction equipment, which skittled untethered from the back of a truck, which didn’t notice, which didn’t care, which kept speeding along the old country roads; has been thrown off the path of other traffic by the impact of Bernie’s car, and sits on the other side, poking out of a hedge, long and thick and metal.

They could have died, they could have died, _they could have died_ , is all that Serena can think, as she fumbles to unclasp her seatbelt. She takes a deep breath as the belt unlatches, forces herself to calm down, and she can hear now the quick, unsteady, stabbing attempts at breathing next to her; turns to Bernie, holds her face in her hands;   _we’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay_ , spilling from her lips, warm, alive.

The maudlin cries of James Taylor sound from the speakers, disjointed, at odds with the adrenalin rushing through her veins, the quickened beat ( _beat, beat_ ) of her heart, and she stays, soothes, until Bernie’s breathing steadies, until her body slows too.

Bernie peers at her for a moment, shoulders falling, tears forming in her eyes. Serena grips the back of her neck then, and their lips crash together - frantic, relieved - and hands are everywhere, a desperate assessment, a frenzied, tender examination.

They kiss until they’re breathless, until they have to break apart, and Bernie leans her forehead against her forehead.

‘I love you,’ she whispers, sniffles, pauses for a moment. She sucks in a shaky breath, when Serena moves against her mouth again, lips barely there and trembling.

'I love you, too.’

Bernie makes to pull away but Serena keeps a grip on her hand, forces her to keep eye contact to stay close.

‘What do we do?’

‘We get help.’ Bernie says. She pulls her hand gently from Serena’s grasp, opens the door. Serena watches her moving around the car to inspect the damage, a little wobbly on her feet, a shrug ( _it could have been worse_ ) in Serena’s direction through the mud-splattered windscreen, as the engine falters, and the car stops and starts, with Serena leaning across the car to reach the keys.

She’s still a little wobbly on her feet as she squeezes Serena’s hand through the open window, tells her she’ll be back soon – water bottle in one hand and her phone in the other, made useless, no signal.

 Serena watches her feet stumble and her knees tremble as she marches away, towards the town – a mile or so back – her own sort of soldier, her own guardian angel, her own fucking hero.

-

 

It’s a few hours, without Bernie, only a few cars that speed straight past, only one that stops, offers a sympathetic word. She waves them off, tell them help is on its way, her friend, her _partner_ , should be back soon. Her mouth is tired and defiant, her heart revelling in the way her tongue wraps around the word.

She’s restless for a few hours, drinks the last of the water, contemplates picking the grapes off the floor – that had flown and spilt. She’s tired for a few hours, stretches out in the backseat, stares out the window at the sky, closes her eyes – her body spiralling down from the peak it had stood on, dwindling now.  

It’s dusk by the time Bernie gets back, a smile perched on her lips and a bag of food held aloft in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other.

‘My kinda gal,’ she says, as she unwraps the bright scarf from around her neck, drapes it on the middle seat, makes a makeshift rug for their makeshift picnic. Bernie grins and shuffles into the car.

‘My friend, the mechanic I told you about, the one from my unit? She’s on her way,’ she says, muffled as she rips the plastic with her teeth. Crackers burst and spill onto the scarf between them. Bernie stares, shrugs, picks at them, while Serena starts on the orange, plunging her short nail into the centre of the peel, where the segments meet.

‘Oh, that’s lucky. She lives around here?’

‘Well – not – a little way away. We didn’t quite make it.’

‘That’s where we were staying?’

‘No, more like a pit stop. But – ’ she gestures around her, to the car, to them, both a little worse for wear, and the sun is beginning to disappear beneath the horizon. She chances a look at Serena, orange juice hands wrestling with the lid of the wine. ‘Are you annoyed?’

‘About the car? Or your friend?’ she teases, but it falls flat, her face falls flat as she watches Bernie tug at her clothes, chew at her lip.

‘Both?’

‘ _Neither_ , darling.’

She reaches to squeeze Bernie’s hand; orange juice fingers walking the distance between them.

-

 

The cool night air whisks through the window and the low, soft melancholy strains of Billie Holiday play from the speakers. The food has long since been devoured, discarded. They sit close to each other, Bernie’s legs flung over Serena’s lap, passing the bottle between them.

‘Guess you got me camping after all,’ Serena teases, brushing the crumbs from her scarf. Bernie breathes out a laugh and turns to face her, rests her chin on her shoulder, blows her fringe off her forehead.

‘Not sure it was worth it though, never got to see you in that dress.’

‘Dress?’ Serena asks, then sits up a little, peers into the boot to see it, wrinkled now, crushed now, beneath some books, some crackers, some orange peel. She yanks it out from where it lies, grins wide at Bernie, takes a long swig of the cheap shiraz before shuffling out of the car.

‘Serena?’

 _'Fuck_ , it’s fucking freezing!’

‘What on earth are you _doing_?’

The breeze is unburdened by city air, unchecked by city high-rises – fresh and cold and nipping at her skin as she shuffles out of her clothes, shimmies into the dress. She manages to wrangle the zip herself, tugs it until it looks right. She wonders, vaguely, what she must look like, to a car screaming past, to a wandering farmer, to a lazy sheep, to Bernie – brows raised, face bright, heart full – what she must look like in the glare of passing headlights, unbuttoned pants, no shirt, black bra. But the pang of inhibitions is dulled by the half bottle of wine, made obsolete by the look on Bernie’s face when she flings the door open.

She watches her mouth open, shut, open again, watches her eyes rake over her figure, watches her chew at her lip. Her gaze follows where it plunges between her breasts, where it hugs her hips, where it brushes at her knees.

‘Blimey,’ she croaks.

Serena grins as she slides back into the back seat and Bernie reaches for her, pulls her closer, so that their legs are tangled together, so that they face each other. She rubs absent-mindedly at Serena’s arms (the goosebump skin there, the fine hair on ends there) to warm her up.

‘Worth it then?’

She clears her throat, shakes her hair around her face – loose, messy, blonde, everywhere – meets her gaze for a moment, before letting her eyes fall to her lips – curled in a smirk. She feels a little coy, feels a little sexy, feels a little full to the brim with affection, desire, love.

Bernie reaches out, lets her index finger follow the line of the dress, from shoulder to breast, lets it wander, experimentally, over a hardened nipple, over the other. Serena lets out a small gasp. Bernie leans forward, presses her mouth to the corner of Serena’s lips, kisses her light, kisses her again.

‘Definitely worth it,’ she mumbles, stills, smiles; lets Serena turn her head a little, catch her lips a little. She tastes like wine, tastes like fresh fruit and wine, and she hums, _moans_ , against Serena’s mouth; it shoots right through her, a jolt, a spark, better than coffee, better by far.

Serena snakes an arm around Bernie’s shoulder, buries her hand in her hair and pulls her closer, deepens the kiss. It’s a little messy and desperate, all tongues and teeth, none of the finesse of practiced lovers, all the eager fumbling of teenage sweethearts. It’s early days for them, for this - and intimacies come in stops and starts; in a nervous, awkward, giggled, thrilling, adolescent blunder, not at all and then all at once.

Serena is still not quite sure what to do, but her whole body wants her, her whole body feels wanted.

So she throws herself into it, they throw themselves into it together, draw upon hard-won friendship – the ease, care, affection without condition that they’ve grown, that they’ve fostered, that they’ve let flourish – to bumble through the old, new territory of being in love.

They don’t quite know where to put their hands, and mumbled directions ( _please, there, please_ ) fall from mouths, burst out with breathless laughter against skin.

Serena shuffles closer still so her leg is hooked over Bernie’s, so she half-sits in Bernie’s lap – dress hitched up around her thighs – so that she’s balanced, kept steady, by Bernie’s grip on the material at her hip, her fingertips biting at her bum.

Serena leans forward, until her heaving chest is flush against her heaving chest, until Bernie’s head bumps against the cool glass of the window and she lets out a little _ooft._ Serena’s hand shoots up to brace Bernie’s head, squashing it between the window and a mess of loose curls.

 Bernie can see her eyes flash with concern, her face contort with worry, her face very close to hers. She leans forward, holds Serena’s chin and jaw with her slender fingers, holds her gaze for a moment before she lets her nose fall against Serena’s cheek.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she whispers.

Serena feels the smile, wide against her cheek, against her mouth now; can see Bernie’s eyes flutter close, the freckles that have formed between them, scattered across her nose; can see Bernie – just Bernie  – hazy in the glow of fluorescent light.

 ‘Hello, stranger,’ Bernie whispers back, breath puffing over Serena’s lips, tiny smile.

‘Hello, strangers.’

There is a loud knock on the door behind Serena, which makes her yelp, makes them both lose balance. They almost topple to the floor of the backseat; the glare of a flashlight shone at Bernie makes her squint and she holds her hand in front of her eyes, trying to peer through her fingers at the person outside.

‘Graham?’ she asks, hopeful.

‘Wolfe!’

Serena scrambles off Bernie’s lap, scrambles back into her seat, rearranges the skirt of her dress, as Bernie leans to open the car door, and a woman pokes her head in. Bernie lowers the torch she still holds high, and the outline of Captain Graham comes blinking into view. She’s a ruddy sort of woman, mischievous looking, made freckled and red by the sun, jeans muddied, hands a touch grubby. But her hair is piled neatly above her head, and Serena can see her free hand waver, go to salute, bring itself down in a fist by her side.

‘Help has arrived,’ she announces, a cheeky grin, tongue through her teeth. ‘Though maybe I’m not needed?’

‘Oh, shove off.’ Bernie replies, waves her away with a smile, the old familiarity of friends, puts her hand on Serena’s knee instead. ‘This is – um, this is my – Serena.’

‘I gathered.’ She thrusts out a hand and shakes Serena’s firmly when it’s given. She offers a steady, earnest _hello_ , in a drawling Australian accent, untampered by years in the British Isles. ‘She doesn’t shut up about you.’

Serena can see the blush, blossoming on Bernie’s cheeks, as she squeezes Serena’s thigh, as she shuffles out of the door.

‘You gonna look at the car or not?’ she teases, and Serena follows suit, circling around to stand – barefoot, barely dressed – in the front of the crumpled bonnet. Captain Graham wheels round, thrusts the torch in Serena’s hands and asks her to hold it so she can yank it open with help from Bernie.

She watches them, bent over the car, for a few moments: mumbling between them, _umm_ -ing and _aah_ -ing about the engine and the carburetor. She thinks she could help them, has learned a thing or two about cars, but prefers to listen to them, to the tender, practiced sort of shorthand between them. There’s the kind of clipped, rapid, teasing language that comes along with old, firm friends, that runs naturally from tongues, that bubble, overflow, even after time apart; but it’s marked by a sort of quiet genuflection, a gentle acknowledgment of rank and position.

It’s fascinating to watch the change in Bernie’s posture, the way her jaw sets, the way she holds her body – commanding, confident, broader, louder. It’s army habits of old, drilled into them both from day one, and they fall back into the roles naturally – Bernie is her friend, Bernie outranks her.

‘Yeah,’ the captain turns around, hands on her hips, _tsk_ s. ‘This is cactus.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Listen,’ she says, flicks her wrist to peer at her watch. ‘It’s getting late. We’ll get this towed and you can come back to mine. You were gonna stay anyway, right? Perfect timing.’

Bernie throws a questioning look at Serena, who barely stifles a yawn, who barely manages a nod, a shrug, a _whatever._ It’s been a long day.

-

 

She’s half asleep by the time they reach the farm. The car has been safely towed away, and they drive in the captain’s old four-wheel drive – muddy like her, sturdy like her – for what seems like hours before they crest a hill, skid around a corner, up a gravel driveway, come to a stop outside a large cottage. Lights stream from the front windows, ‘GRAHAM’ painted neatly on the brick near the front door, printed on the box stuffed with letters, junk mail, bills.

She’s yanked from her half-slumber by the slam of a car door, a light tap on her knee, _wake up sleepyhead_ mumbled affectionately at her from the front seat, from a dishevelled looking Bernie.

They race to catch Graham striding ahead of them – yanking the paper from the letterbox, fumbling for her keys – and they spill into a warm entrance. The sounds of dishes, clattering on granite, and the tinkling of non-descript, gentle music, and the yap _yap yap_ of a dark little puppy, which bounds up to its owner, plays at her heels; fills the house. A woman, slender and barefoot, a crop of light hair cut short around her ears and a too big shirt swallowing her figure, rounds the corner after the dog – flicks a tea towel over her shoulder, kisses the captain, quick and short and tender.

She has a gentle smile and a quiet disposition, greets the two of them affectionately; traipses back around the corner, and they follow where she leads.

Serena watches Bernie watching the couple dance around each other in the kitchen, fill each other up with the boring, gorgeous, domestic banality of their day. She wonders if Bernie misses it - married life - wonders if she’s jealous. She wonders, as one wife reaches past the other on tiptoes to grab the wine glasses, whether Bernie imagines the two of them –  the predictable normality of picking up the groceries and arguing over television – the ease of a couple five, ten years down the road. She hopes so.

After crackers and oranges and cheap cooking wine, dinner is a luxury. She barely takes a breath from inhaling the spaghetti to sip at a glass of expensive shiraz, to watch the steady flow of banter that runs freely from the mouth of the old friends.

The wife – Sarah – has a Northern edge to her soft accent, has the same affectionate, despairing, civilian gaze at the lengthy anecdotes; the adventures of Captain Graham and Major Wolfe, and broken down cars in the Kandahar.

‘I’m sorry,’ she interjects, as laughter peters out once again and they pick up their forks. ‘But – what – what’s your name?’

‘Oh!’ she breathes out a laugh. ‘Bernie hasn’t told you?’

‘I didn’t say?’ Bernie asks, leans forward, blush fierce and face bright, happy.

‘No, you went all army, didn’t you? _Hoo-ah_ and all that.’

Serna pouts. Graham smiles. Bernie throws her head back, honks out a laugh, and Sarah leans forward, jolly, conspiratorial.  

‘It’s Rose!’ she hisses, a stage whisper loud enough for all to hear, and grins. ‘She _hates_ it. Says it's flowery, so she’s always Graham.’

‘Yeah, she’s not the flowery sort,’ Bernie teases.

‘Alright, _Berenice_ ,’ Graham quips, accent landing heavy on the syllables, accentuating the rise and fall of her name – the hard _r,_ the long end – and Bernie scrunches her nose, leans back in her chair with a laugh. Serena thinks she could get used to this; thinks she could do this for the rest of her life.

-

 

Serena’s whole body aches, thrums with exhaustion, and she barely resists the urge to flop down in her dusty dress, on the clean sheets of the freshly made bed, in the expanse of the guest bedroom, and fall asleep straight away.

She wrestles with her zip instead, lets the dress fall and land on the carpet, the gentle care of new clothes long since dispensed. She makes a trail of shoes, knickers, bra; undressing as she stumbles towards the bathroom.

The light is stark, clinical, unforgiving; she takes a moment to look at herself in the bathroom. Bruises have started to blossom where they seatbelt had caught her, by her collarbone, by her hip, and they’ll be black and blue in the morning. Tiger stripe stretch marks paint her lower stomach, paint her thighs, tattoos of motherhood earned long ago. Wrinkles form at the corner of her eyes, on her forehead – where frowns have sat, where laughter has formed. Shocks of grey beginning to peek through at the sides of her short crop of hair. _Must dye that soon,_ she thinks, as she brushes her teeth.

Her body feels heavy, feels old and weighed down, but she likes it all the same, is settled in it all the same. She feels more settled in her body than she has in years, knows it will feel lighter in the morning, knows it feels lighter with Bernie wrapped around it.

Buoyed by good wine, good company, by a heady amount of self-confidence, by a good few weeks of fucking – slow and gentle, rough and quick (they can’t keep their hands off each other) – her fingers follow the path that Bernie’s lips have taken, mouth pressed to the marks across her stomach, to the top of breasts, which have lost the pertness of youth, up to her chin, her mouth, her cheeks, the lines by the corner of her eyes. She feels lucky, she feels lovely, she feels loved.

In the shower, the hot stream of water runs over her face, over her body, soothes the aching muscles, the tired bones. She closes her eyes, leans back, lets the water rush over her back; opens her eyes when the door creaks, smiles when the curtain shifts; lets out a sigh when she feels Bernie touch her arm, run a hand over her waist, press a kiss to her shoulder.

She rests her weight on her, breathes, revels in the steady beat of Bernie’s heart against her back, sure and close and _alive_ , beneath the heave of her breasts, above the splashing of water falling on the shower floor.

‘Sorry about today,’ she mumbles, against her shoulder, and Serena huffs, turns in a circle, opens her eyes a little, peers at Bernie through wet eyelashes. Bernie’s hair sticks to her face; she chews at her lip. She runs a finger, careful, over the bruise near Serena’s hip, up to the bruise near her collarbone. She looks so soft, so tired, so _worried,_ that Serena doesn’t think she can bear it.

‘Today was good.’

‘Apart from the car.’

‘Apart from the car,’ she says, cocks her head, leans forward to kiss the tense muscle of her shoulder, the fresh bruise near her collarbone, the old bruise behind her ear - that Serena put there with her happy mouth, that she giggled over, that she covered with make-up, hid with her hair at work.

Bruises fade, she’s saying, bruises fade, and cars get fixed. She loves her, she’s saying, with her hands wrapped around her waist and knees knocking against her knees.  _She loves her._

-

 

They crawl onto the bed, clean bodies on clean sheets - and Serena lets out an almighty yawn. She has foregone the little slip she bought for the weekend, opted for one of Bernie’s t-shirts instead, and it lifts around her hips as she crawls under the covers. Bernie follows suit when Serena pats drowsily at the mattress beside her, chuckles when Serena flings an arm over her waist, buries her head in Bernie’s neck, pretends to snore, loud.

‘We’re never getting out of this bed,’ Serena says, muffled, against Bernie’s shower-warm skin.

‘Fine with me,’ she replies, knocks her feet, presses her mouth to the line of her hair.

Serena shuffles closer still, and she moves her head, so it rests against Bernie’s shoulder, so she can peer up at her a little. She searches blindly for her hand under the covers, clutches it, tangles their fingers. Her brow is set, her face earnest, her eyes wide, and sparkling.

‘Today was perfect.’  



End file.
